Crack Down (30 page)

I squeezed his hand. “Me too.” It had been an interesting few weeks. In spite of his misgivings about my information, Geoff Turnbull had put full surveillance on Terry Fitz, Jammy James
and the chemical kitchen. They'd swooped in the early hours of Friday morning. They'd actually caught Terry Fitz red-handed in a stolen Mazda MX5 halfway down the M40 with trade plates and five kilos of crack in the boot. A dozen bodies had been remanded in custody at Saturday morning's Magistrates' Court. According to Ruth, nothing had come up in the interviews that even remotely implicated Richard or me. The police had even managed to establish that James and his team of dealers still had no idea who had driven off in a “stolen” car with a boot full of crack. Best of all, the police seemed to think they wouldn't need me to testify in court, which I reckoned significantly increased my chances of celebrating my thirtieth birthday. After all, Crazy Eddy wasn't the only hit man in Greater Manchester.

Speaking of Crazy Eddy, he'd been charged with murdering Cherie and attempting to murder me. According to Della, it looked like he was also going to be charged with a couple of other street shootings in Moss Side just after Easter. He was still doing the Trappist monk routine with all of the coppers who'd done their brains in trying to interview him. He hadn't even asked for a solicitor. Interestingly, it turned out that Terry Fitz had been in the Paras with Crazy Eddy, which was how Eddy had got involved as spotter for the car-stealing racket. The police also suspected that Jammy James's outfit was responsible for recommending him to the child-porn merchants as a hit man.

There was another connection between the two teams. It turned out that James's mob were supplying the designer drugs for the kids to the child-porn gang in exchange for videos they could sell on through their own network. Or, in the case of one of Terry Fitz's cronies, hang on to for their own sick purposes. Which explained the mysterious Polaroid that had slipped down the side of the seat in the Gemini coupé.

The house in Oliver Tambo Close had been a proper little gold mine for the Vice Squad. Not only had they put a stop to the racket, they'd found the porn makers' mailing list, investigation of which was currently causing marital difficulties from Land's End to John O'Groats; or rather, from an executive housing estate in Penzance to a croft on the Shetland Isles. Served them right too.
The only bleak piece of news was that the two middle-aged bastards who'd made most of the profits from the sleazy trade had legged it at the first sign of trouble. The word is they're somewhere on the Algarve, playing golf.

And the police had finally released Andrew Broderick's Leo Gemini turbo super coupé. In his shoes, I'd have been less than thrilled at being deprived of one of my company's flagship motors for so long, but Andrew was a happy man. More than two months had passed since Richard and I had started doing the groundwork to expose the fiddle that the car dealerships were up to. And not a single one of the cars we'd purchased had been reported sold to his finance company. Which meant Andrew had been absolutely right about the scam, and with every day that passed without the cars being notified, he had more ammo to fight the war for his new distribution system.

Not only that, but the vague hunch I'd had had paid off in spades. With all the aggro there had been the day after the bank holiday, I'd completely forgotten Julia was supposed to be sending me a fax. When I finally got out of hospital, it was sitting in my in-tray, buried in a pile of correspondence that Shelley had been carefully nurturing for me.

What I'd asked Julia for was a company check on both Richmond Credit Finance and the chain of car dealerships that had been the main target of our investigation. It wasn't difficult to come by the information. The only reason we don't have it online ourselves is that it's more cost-effective for us to get the info from Josh than to subscribe to the appropriate database. Anyway, when I'd been able to get my eyes to focus properly, I'd compared the two sets of directors. Surprise, surprise. The managing director and principal shareholder of Richmond Credit Finance was the wife of the managing director and principal shareholder of the garages, an interesting coincidence that is currently occupying some of the working hours of Detective Chief Inspector Della Prentice.

So, instead of trying to bully us into cutting our bill, Andrew was keen to make sure we felt Mortensen and Brannigan were properly rewarded for our efforts. I wasn't about to argue with him.

After the tower, there was nothing for it but fish and chips. I
suggested beating the traffic by going back to Harry Ramsden's in Manchester, and the idea was supported by two votes to one. To take Davy's mind off his disappointment, we challenged him to a race back to the car. We let him win, of course. He looked much more appealing than the Rolls Royce silver lady sitting on the bonnet of my slightly shop-soiled, midnight blue Leo Gemini turbo super coupé GLXi. Some days you eat the bear.

Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community and is a graduate of Oxford University. She worked as a journalist for 16 years, the final three as Northern Bureau Chief of a major Sunday newspaper. She quit journalism in 1991 to write full-time. Since her first novel was published in 1987, she has written a further 19 and one non-fiction book.

Val's books are international bestsellers and have won many awards. These include the Gold Dagger for
The Mermaids Singing
, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anthony, the Dilys, the Barry and the Macavity for
A Place of Execution
, the Sherlock and the Barry for
The Distant Echo
and the Grand Prix des Romans d'Aventure for
Star Struck
. She was the first writer to be presented with the Icon of Scotland award at Tartan Day in New York. Her short stories have twice been nominated for Dagger awards and she edited a short story anthology,
Endangered Species
, for Arts Council England. Her work has been translated into over 30 languages and her series featuring Tony Hill and Carol Jordan has been adapted for the award-winning TV series,
Wire in the Blood
, which has been transmitted in almost 30 countries. She is also a regular contributor to BBC radio and founder of the Harrogate International Crime Writing Festival.

Val lives with her son and her partner in the North of England.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1994 by Val McDermid

 

 

 

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First published in Great Britain in 1994 by HarperCollins
Publishers

 

First published in the United States of America in 1994 by Charles Scribner's Sons

 

 

 

 

eISBN : 978-1-612-94014-4